<div>Intelligent Agents Peer Upward</div> <div>Lissa E. Harris</div> <p>The burst of radiation from SS Cygni wasn?t what made this night unusual. In fact, a team of astronomers and software engineers standing by in Hilo, at the base of the mountain, had known all along that the dwarf nova would be flaring. The extraordinary thing was the observer: it wasn?t human, but a software program, known as an intelligent agent, designed to comb through data for signs of ephemeral and little-understood events in the night sky. This agent was designed to pick out rapid changes in dwarf novae, and the observation at UKIRT last August was a test of its mettle.</p>